The Sin Eater(46)

A faint mist lay everywhere, and Declan shivered and turned up his coat collar. ‘Romilly can’t be living here, can she?’

‘Little Trumbull said so.’ Colm paused at the intersection of two streets, and indicated a smoke-blackened sign.

‘Clock Street,’ said Declan. ‘The abortionist’s lair.’

‘I wouldn’t, myself, have put it so dramatically. But let’s take a look.’

They had both been expecting Clock Street, where the unknown Mr Bullfinch plied his grisly trade, to be a sinister place, but there were only the same narrow houses, the same grey hopelessness. At the far end were warehouses with grimed bricks and blind, glassless windows.

‘We’re nearly at the quayside,’ said Declan. ‘Can you hear the river sounds?’

‘I don’t know about hearing the river; I can smell it,’ said Colm, disgustedly. ‘It’s like a wet coughing infection. If Romilly’s living here, she’ll be dead of typhoid within a month.’

‘There’s a flight of stone steps over there,’ said Declan. ‘That girl at Holly Lodge – Cerise – said Bullfinch lived near the river steps.’

‘He can’t make much money from what he does, or he’d have moved away long since,’ said Colm. ‘Are we going to confront Bullfinch? He’d probably be able to tell us where Bidder Lane is – even which house Romilly’s living in.’

‘Let’s see if we can find it for ourselves,’ said Declan, unwilling to march up to an abortionist’s house and demand to know the whereabouts of one of his clients.

Bidder Lane, when they found it, was no better and no worse than the other streets.

‘But which house?’ said Colm, standing still and looking about him.

‘We’ll knock on all the doors until we find her. Somebody’ll know her,’ said Declan.

In the event, the fourth house they tried provided the information. ‘Romilly Rourke,’ said the slatternly women. ‘Irish like you? Then it’s Number Forty, down there.’

‘You know her?’

‘Not to say know. Can’t miss her, though, not with that hair.’

When they knocked on the door of Number 40 it swung open. A smell of stale cooking and old damp gusted out and beyond the door was a narrow hall with a steep flight of stairs.

Colm called out, but there was no response and they looked at one another, neither wanting to go inside, but aware that having got this close to Romilly they could not go back.

The house did not look as if anyone had cared about it for years. Their footsteps rang out in the silence, and when Declan opened the doors of the two downstairs rooms the hinges screeched as if they were not accustomed to being used. There was a sour-smelling scullery at the back of the house with a cat-ridden square of garden beyond, and a grisly-looking wooden structure at the foot, which they supposed was an earth closet.

‘Shared with at least six other houses,’ said Declan, pointing. ‘I thought we were poor in Kilglenn, but it was a different kind of poverty. And there are hundreds of people living like this in London, probably thousands—’ He broke off and they both turned to the stair. From above them came a faint cry, followed by a weak tapping.

Colm was halfway up the stairs before the sounds had died away, Declan hard on his heels. They opened two doors on to sad, empty rooms, then the third.

The first thing to assault their senses was the stench. It was like bad meat, like something dead for a very long time. Colm recoiled and Declan clapped a hand over his mouth, and for a moment both had to fight a compulsion to run back down to the street.

For a moment they thought that the figure sprawled on the bed was not Romilly after all. This was someone much older, someone husked dry of life and hope and delight . . . And yet the stringy hair had once been bright copper, and the waxen skin had been like porcelain . . .

A thread-like voice said, ‘Hello, Colm. You took your time getting here . . .’

She was lying amidst blood-soaked sheets, and on a marble washstand was a basin, covered with a stained cloth.

Colm said, ‘Oh, Jesus, Rom, what happened to you?’ To Declan’s shame Colm was already seated on the edge of the bed, reaching for the thin hands, apparently heedless of the mess. He swallowed hard, then followed suit, sitting on the other side, reaching for Romilly’s other hand. Once it had been smooth and soft; now it felt like sandpaper and although he had expected it to be cold, it was not: it was as if the bones beneath were burning their way through what little flesh was left.

‘Bloody butcher,’ said Romilly, and even amidst the horror of the room, this was a small extra pinprick of shock because Romilly had never used bad language in Kilglenn.

‘We know you were . . . going to have a child,’ said Declan, awkwardly.

‘I was, but I didn’t intend to go through with it,’ said Romilly. ‘So I thought, I’ll get rid of it while it’s nothing more than a speck.’ Neither Colm nor Declan said anything, and Romilly said, angrily, ‘Listen, I know it’s a mortal sin and I’ll fry in hell . . . But can you see me with a kid? I’d hold it wrong way up half the time. And how was I supposed to feed it and clothe it when I’ve hardly been able to feed and clothe myself?’ She broke off, twisting in the bed as if trying to escape pain. ‘But wouldn’t you know I’d get even that wrong?’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you know that man would prod around too sharply and tear something?’